Ken's Log
by Cyndan
Summary: From birth, Ken grew up in hardship. Barely a teen, the Quilava is forced to flee for his life, escaping a life of bondage. This log encompasses his first-hand account of his experiences.


Life has never been easy. Even the day I was born was a struggle. I fought for my life at the very beginning, fighting a disease that normally strengthened others. They call it "Pokerus" today. At the time, however, it was still a relatively new type of "sickness", and only its original strain had been discovered.

As it was, I was one of the unlucky ones; my mother had come into contact with a strain that she was immune to, but my father wasn't. He passed away mere days before I was born. Needless to say, it was lethal, and unfortunately for me I wasn't immune like my mother. I was lucky enough to have a resistance, and I'd like to believe that it's that which saved my life.

I grew up sickly, unfit for the life I was supposed to lead. When I was four, I was on my way to be killed discreetly, where others of my would-be trade wouldn't know about my death. I was a Cyndaquil at the time. My mother's earnest pleading was the last thing I heard from her.

I was led to the outskirts of the plains, which ended at the mountains. There, they would tie stones to my legs and throw me into the rapids. I would have died without the stones, but they wanted to make damned sure I would die.

It was because of Him that I survived. He was a tall, proud Dragonite who managed to see some form of potential in me. Rather than have me die, he offered my would-be a deal in which he'd purchase me. It saved them trouble, and they would still get paid.

With His help, I began to recover from my sickness. He knew just what to do to make me better, it seemed. I made a full recovery within a year.

At this point, I was six.

At this point, I truly began my life as a slave.

I never knew my master's name. We merely referred to Him as "He" or "Him." He made us believe that He was our god, and we bought it. We didn't know about Kyogre or Palkia or Yveltal or Arceus. It was just Him.

Contrary to what I was led to believe, He was far from a kind slaveholder. He had even said to me that if it were not for Him, I would be dead in the river, and for that, I owed Him a life of service. As repayment I owed Him the satisfaction of being His _personal_ slave.

He owned many, indeed; in fact, they made up the majority of what I called friends. Adam, a Dunsparce adept at tilling and digging alike; Tinny, a Lairon who knew just where to find ore; and Fi, a Loppunny who my master used almost exclusively for breeding more slaves. You would assume that meant there would be quite the number of Buneary among us, but he'd give her these herbs, and whenever she bred, the child was of its father's species. These three I consider to by my best friends there, but there were a number of others who were kind enough.

So I was His toy. I fetched things for Him, collected information, and gave Him assistance however he needed it. He had even given me a collar, tagged with my name and labelled with his, just to show me how low I stood in the world. This did mean, of course, that He saw me as above the other slaves. He was nice enough most of the time. However, since I was the closest to Him, that also meant that He saw many more mistakes that I made than He did the others'.

The first mistake I had made was forgetting to clean His restroom area. He was livid. Even though I was but a Cyndaquil, he beat me mercilessly. He refused to lash me, though, knowing it would scar my back and lessen my value. Besides; I doubt he'd enjoy the sight.

I did suffer under the whip one day, though. As it was, it was the day I evolved. Being a slave, I worked endlessly, and it's common knowledge that the more you exert yourself, mentally and physically, the sooner you evolve. Being a slave, I evolved shortly after I became nine years old; it may have been ten, as I wasn't sure if I was born in the autumn or the spring. To this day, I'm still not sure.

Upon evolving into a Quilava, my collar that, in His words, that He so lovingly crafted and toiled away on, snapped and lay on the ground, ruined, as He saw. This angered him in a way I had never seen. He grabbed me by my paws and twisted them behind my back; I remember my left arm being in agony for months, and being unable to use it. I believe He had broken it in the process. He grabbed the nearest thing he could find to bind me with, and having discovered me at the edge of his plantation, near one of the barns He kept his tools in, the first thing He found was barbed wire. Even in this wrath, He still debated on whether or not to use it. He did.

His barbed wire wasn't necessarily sharp, but when you're hanging by it it's going to pierce the skin. After forcibly tying my paws together with it, shredding the skin in doing so, he used some of the excess to drag me into the shed, me having to kick wildly to help myself along in order to ease the pain, and trussed me up by the rafters.

I was now hanging by my arms, which, keep in mind, he had tied behind my back. Afterward, it would take Fi's caring paws to push my arms back into place. Even now I was screaming in agony, what with my shoulders out of place and my wrists penetrated in three spots by barbs.

He gave me twenty lashes for evolving without His permission, and another fifty for destroying His personal gift.

After this incident, He found an excuse each week to whip me again, luckily less brutally than the first time, just to keep my scars fresh and to remind me not to slip up again. As a precaution, later that night, he woke me from the little sleep I managed to find in order to drag me into his personal bedroom.

It was unlike anything I had ever seen. A soft material covered the floor and several objects in the room, and a transparent solid covered several holes in the walls. Later I would discover these things to be windows and carpet, as well as silk and satin. He took apart one item (a dresser, as I would learn), and pulled out a small, unseemly brown stone. It looked to be porous. Without hesitation, He grabbed me by my still incredibly sore arm and threw me onto a table. By this point I was too exhausted and hurt to move, so He didn't bother subduing me further or binding me to the surface in some way.

I ended up passing out from the pain, but I do recall my back feeling as though it were on fire, and then the worst pain I had ever felt before _inside_ of me. I imagine he had put that stone inside of me, as I later discovered it to be an Everstone, and after years of training I've yet to become a Typhlosion. I don't mind all too much, but it's embarrassing seeing those fully-evolved, and at the same time depressing knowing I can never reach their level. I am digressing, as it would seem.

Shortly after this incident, my fur began to blacken across my shoulders and back. What was once a soft shade of blue was now as black as night. The only good that came out of this was that I wasn't to be whipped or beaten for a long while; it was only in the next year that I felt the lash once more.

Life continued on. I worked, He laughed. I toiled, He lounged. Soon, He deemed it necessary that I become a true slave, being a Quilava and being able as well to work much harder than before. He stripped me of my "pet" status and sent me to work in the mines, giving the slavers there orders not to whip or beat me unless the mistake I made put others in danger.

Mining was the worst part of my life. The job is dirty, dangerous, and scary. With little to no light, one can barely see, and if one digs in the wrong spot, gasses can kill you within moments without you even realizing what you did.

Luckily, we all survived that year. No one perished, unlike most years, and at New Year's, we were given the right to celebrate for three days. For the first time in my life, I was happy.

January third, we were sent into the mines once more. Our task this month was to find an ore called yryn. It was a dark purple in color, and if one touched it unprotected they would usually come down with some sort of infirmity. The final day we were supposed to look for the ore was the day we found the largest vein. Unluckily for me, it was also the day we ran short on clean gloves. I was the one who drew the short stick and went in unprotected.

Halfway through mining the stuff, I slipped off of a scaffold and fell. It was a six foot drop, and rock is...hard, needless to say. I wasn't able to move. I imagine I don't need to tell you that I fell onto a large yryn deposit.

No one came to my aid. Nobody helped me. I was alone, and even when they mined the ore from beneath me, I was left there, untouched lest I infect others with whatever I had. Abandoned by fellow slaves and slavers alike, I crawled out of the cave on my own.

I knew that I was left for dead. The slavers would report to Him that I had died in a mining accident, and that would be the end of it. No one would come looking, no one would care. I had no other option other than what slaves desired most: I would run to freedom.

It took my the night just to find a place out of sight and sheltered enough that I could stop crawling and rest. No one was looking for me, as they would have assumed I had been eaten by wild, more feral Pokemon, so I managed to sleep peacefully the following evening.

I was still exhausted, as anybody would be, but I wasn't seeing any effects from the yryn ore. I took this as a sign of immunity or dumb luck and I pressed on. His plantation was at the base of the mountains, so I headed there, hoping to cross to the other side and find a free and hopefully prosperous life. Alas, though, I was only thirteen, and knew nothing of survival in the wilds. What little food I could make of grasses and shoots was barely enough to sustain me, especially not in the condition I was in and my plans. Within an hour of travel I was exhausted, and required half as long to rest before pressing on. I recall averaging three to four miles each day.

I don't know how I lasted, but I made it a week in the mountain ranges. I hadn't come across any other Pokemon, and in this type of territory that could only be a good thing. I was starving more than I ever had, even when food had been reserved in my life of slavery. After all, I had never gone more than two days without sustenance, nor had I been eating foods lacking in energy and nutrition.

I had crested what seemed to be the umpteenth hill before I collapsed for good.

I lay there for the rest of the day, unable to move and in incredible pain. I thought I would die, and as a shadow fell over me, blocking out the sun's persistent glow on the lids to my eyes, I thought my fears would be realized. At this point I welcomed death, and saw it as an end to the atrocity I called a life.

It wasn't the end for me yet, though. Whoever stood over picked me up and began to carry me by my scruff, not caring however much I swayed back and forth, fully limp. It felt like an hour of this travel, a steady and unwavering pace, before I was finally set down. I fell asleep at one point during the trip, and for how long I cannot say. All I know is that I had been awake for a total of an hour.

What I lay in now was soft and rather comfortable, better than anything I had ever lay in before save for His own quarters. There were several noises around me, steam among them in addition to a bit of clanking and clattering, and after several hours had passed, my strength fading more than it ever had, my body was raised forward so that I sat up, propped up on pillows. A gentle paw, one that felt the same as the one that had picked me up, pushed back my head to part my mouth, and a warm fluid trickled into it. I won't lie; it tasted horrid. It did, however, rekindle my energy, and within a mere few seconds I was feeling much stronger than before.

Still exhausted, I couldn't move, but after a few more sips of this presumably herbal substance, I managed to open my eyes. A blue canid Pokemon stood over me, his eyes stoic and seemingly uncaring. He appeared to be doing this out of sheer responsibility whether by profession or morally rather than out of the goodness of his heart. Smiling slightly, I tried to reach out a paw, but the moment it raised even a fraction of an inch he forced it back down.

"Rest," he told me, and with such a serious, almost dangerous voice, I knew better than to argue. I closed my eyes and lay back, the Lucario finished with feeding me, and I fell asleep.

I awoke, strangely enough, as dawn broke. At this point I was strong enough to think rationally rather than only upon moving. After opening my eyes I remember looking around the cavern where I lay in. I had been sleeping in a bed made upon a rock shelf, and several pieces of furniture adorned the room. One of which was a cabinet, another rock shelf but with wooden cupboards built beneath it. The Lucario who I assumed had saved my life and taken me in busied himself with mixing food items together. One of these foods, or so I thought it had to be, smelled absolutely delicious and was something I had never smelled before. It was a dark brown in color, and carried the scent of burned blood to it.

I had only been watching him for a few seconds before he turned around and spoke again. "You're awake," was all he said before handing me a wooden circle with some of the food on it. I didn't hesitate to dig in.

This meal was absolutely divine, and this new food mixed in even more so. When I had asked what it was, the stranger merely raised a brow and did not answer. Not caring much about it, I finished and asked for another plate. Although refused, I didn't mind too much, my hunger sated for the moment.

"You, Quilava...what were you doing in the mountains alone? You would have died," he spat, suddenly angry with me. I was taken aback. I fully expected him to be at least polite, but apparently, it wouldn't be so.

"I was running away," I replied, meek in my manner.

"From what?"

"His plantation."

"Whose plantation?" he barked, beginning to grow frustrated.

"His!" I replied, my own frustration beginning to rise.

"Who is he, then? Stop being vague!" he ordered.

"He doesn't have a name! The slaves and I just called him...well...Him," I managed to explain. If my memory holds true, I was beginning to cry out of fear. At the mention of slaves, the Lucario seemed taken aback as he realized just who I was talking about.

Sitting back, he sighed. "You're lucky to be alive, kid. If He ever finds out you're alive and ran away, I can't guarantee your life," he softly spoke. "I'll offer you this, though. You have potential. I can tell from a glance that there's something unique about you. You've come into contact with Pokerus, and something's caused that change in fur color. Not many of your line are lucky enough to have darker fur. At the least, I at least know where all those scars on your back came from.

"Here's your offer, though. You stay here, I take care of you, and then I train you. You join my guild, and you'll live a full, hopefully wealthy life. However, if you do so, you'll be wanted by the law should our town take notice of our activities. The other side of the coin, should you refuse, is that I release you to die on your own. If you decide to join me and then either run away or try to mutiny, I'll kill you without hesitation. Make your pick."

The offer was rather one-sided. If I didn't join with him, I'd die in the mountains. If I did, I was a criminal. I wasn't an idiot, however, and I knew that life was worth more than whatever morals I had gathered over the course of my short life; at the least, what we did that did break the law hopefully wasn't too bad. I made my choice.

It was through this that I met Raze and came to be who I am today. Although he did trick me into thinking we were still in the mountains, when in reality we were in a lush forest next to Sunbeam Falls (this cavern was actually behind the waterfall, as it would be). Leading the life of a thief was challenging at first, and I was forced to quickly get over my current ideals of right and wrong. My largest consolation was that we did our best not to kill, and to only steal from those who owned a lot as it was. I'm happy here, though, and looking back on it, I don't think I would have fit in anywhere else.

There's no going back, though, not when I've already become the apprentice to an esteemed outlaw.


End file.
